On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

We had climbed and slipped fifteen miles at an altitude of 12,000 feet, getting far above the timber line and into the region of perpetual snow. Still, at that elevation, a few pleasant-faced little blue and white flowers, principally forget-me-nots, kept us company to the very edge of snow-banks. I sat upon a snowbank, and with one hand wrote my notes and with the other plucked forget-me-nots or fought off the mosquitoes. We followed down the cañon of the creek until we had reached the timber, and there, in a dense growth of spruce and fir, went into bivouac in a most charming retreat. Buffalo tracks were seen all day, the animal having crossed the range by the same trail we had used. Besides buffalo tracks we saw the trails of mountain sheep, of which General Crook and Lieutenant Schuyler killed two. The only other life was tit-larks, butterflies, grasshoppers, flies, and the mosquitoes already spoken of. The snow in one place was sixty to seventy feet deep and had not been disturbed for years, because there were five or six strata of grasshoppers frozen stiff, each representing one season. In all cases where the snow had drifted into sheltered ravines and was not exposed to direct solar action, it never melted from year’s end to year’s end. Our supper of mountain mutton and of sheep and elk heart boiled in salt water was eaten by the light of the fire, and was followed by a restful sleep upon couches of spruce boughs.

We returned to our main camp on the 4th of July, guided by General Crook over a new trail, which proved to be a great improvement upon the other. Mr. John F. Finerty killed his first buffalo, which appeared to be a very good specimen at the time, but after perusing the description given by Finerty in the columns of the Times, several weeks later, we saw that it must have been at least eleven feet high and weighed not much less than nine thousand pounds. We made chase after a herd of sixteen elk drinking at one of the lakes, but on account of the noise in getting through fallen timber were unable to approach near enough. An hour later, while I was jotting down the character of the country in my note-book, eight mountain sheep came up almost close enough to touch me, and gazed with wonder at the intruder. They were beautiful creatures in appearance: somewhat of a cross between the deer, the sheep, and the mule; the head resembles that of the domestic sheep, surmounted by a pair of ponderous convoluted horns; the body, in a slight degree, that of a mule, but much more graceful; and the legs those of a deer, but somewhat more “chunky;” the tail, short, slender, furnished with a brush at the extremity; the hair, short and chocolate-gray in color; the eyes rival the beauty of the topaz. Before I could grasp my carbine they had scampered around a rocky promontory, where three of them were killed: one by General Crook and two by others of the party.

Camp kept moving from creek to creek in the valley of the Tongue, always finding abundant pasturage, plenty of fuel, and an ample supply of the coldest and best water. The foot-hills of the Big Horn are the ideal camping-grounds for mounted troops; the grass grows to such a height that it can be cut with a mowing-machine; cattle thrive, and although the winters are severe, with proper shelter all kinds of stock should prosper. The opportunity of making a suitable cross between the acclimatized buffalo and the domestic stock has perhaps been lost, but it is not too late to discuss the advisability of introducing the Thibetan yak, a bovine accustomed to the polar rigors of the Himalayas, and which has been tamed and used either for the purposes of the dairy or for those of draught and saddle. The body of the yak is covered with a long coat of hair, which enables it to lie down in the snow-drifts without incurring any risk of catching cold. The milk of the yak is said to be remarkably rich, and the butter possesses the admirable quality of keeping fresh for a long time.

This constant moving of camp had another object: the troops were kept in practice in taking down and putting up tents; saddling and unsaddling horses; packing and unpacking wagons; laying out camps, with a due regard for hygiene by building sinks in proper places; forming promptly; and, above all, were kept occupied. The raw recruits of the spring were insensibly converted into veterans before the close of summer. The credulity of the reader will be taxed to the utmost limit if he follow my record of the catches of trout made in all these streams. What these catches would have amounted to had there been no herds of horses and mules—we had, it must be remembered, over two thousand when the wagon-trains, pack-trains, Indian scouts, and soldiers were all assembled together—I am unable to say; but the hundreds and thousands of fine fish taken from that set of creeks by officers and soldiers, who had nothing but the rudest appliances, speaks of the wonderful resources of the country in game at that time.

The ambition of the general run of officers and men was to take from fifteen to thirty trout, enough to furnish a good meal for themselves and their messmates; but others were carried away by the desire to make a record as against that of other fishers of repute. These catches were carefully distributed throughout camp, and the enlisted men fared as well as the officers in the matter of game and everything else which the country afforded. General Crook and the battalion commanders under him were determined that there should be no waste, and insisted upon the fish being eaten at once or dried for later use. Major Dewees is credited with sixty-eight large fish caught in one afternoon, Bubb with eighty, Crook with seventy, and so on. Some of the packers having brought in reports of beautiful deep pools farther up the mountain, in which lay hidden fish far greater in size and weight than those caught closer to camp, a party was formed at headquarters to investigate and report. Our principal object was to enjoy the cool swimming pools so eloquently described by our informants; but next to that we intended trying our luck in hauling in trout of exceptional size.

The rough little bridle-path led into most romantic scenery: the grim walls of the cañon began to crowd closely upon the banks of the stream; in places there was no bank at all, and the swirling, brawling current rushed along the rocky wall, while our ponies carefully picked their way over a trail, narrow, sharp, and dangerous as the knife-edge across which true believers were to enter into Mahomet’s Paradise. Before long we gained a mossy glade, hidden in the granite ramparts of the cañon, where we found a few blades of grass for the animals and shade from the too warm rays of the sun. The moss-covered banks terminated in a flat stone table, reaching well out into the current and shaded by overhanging boulders and widely-branching trees. The dark-green water in front rushed swiftly and almost noiselessly by, but not more than five or six yards below our position several sharp-toothed fragments of granite barred the progress of the current, which grew white with rage as it hissed and roared on its downward course.

We disrobed and entered the bath, greatly to the astonishment of a school of trout of all sizes which circled about and darted in and out among the rocks, trying to determine who and what we were. We were almost persuaded that we were the first white men to penetrate to that seclusion. Our bath was delightful; everything combined to make it so—shade, cleanliness, convenience of access, purity and coolness of the water, and such perfect privacy that Diana herself might have chosen it for her ablutions! Splash! splash!—a sound below us! The illusion was very strong, and for a moment we were willing to admit that the classical huntress had been disturbed at her toilet, and that we were all to share the fate of Actæon. Our apprehensions didn’t last long; we peeped through the foliage and saw that it was not Diana, but an army teamster washing a pair of unquestionably muddy overalls. Our bath finished, we took our stand upon projecting rocks and cast bait into the stream.

We were not long in finding out the politics of the Big Horn trout; they were McKinleyites, every one; or, to speak more strictly, they were the forerunners of McKinleyism. We tried them with all sorts of imported and manufactured flies of gaudy tints or sombre hues—it made no difference. After suspiciously nosing them they would flap their tails, strike with the side-fins, and then, having gained a distance of ten feet, would most provokingly stay there and watch us from under the shelter of slippery rocks. Foreign luxuries evidently had no charm for them. Next we tried them with home-made grasshoppers, caught on the banks of their native stream. The change was wonderful: in less than a second, trout darted out from all sorts of unexpected places—from the edge of the rapids below us, from under gloomy blocks of granite, from amid the gnarly roots of almost amphibious trees. My comrades had come for an afternoon’s fishing, and began, without more ado, to haul in the struggling, quivering captives. My own purpose was to catch one or two of good size, and then return to camp. A teamster, named O’Shaughnessy, formerly of the Fourteenth Infantry, who had been brought up in the salmon districts of Ireland, was standing near me with a large mess just caught; he handed me his willow branch, most temptingly baited with grasshoppers, at the same time telling me there was a fine big fish, “a regular buster, in the hole beyant.” He had been unable to coax him out from his retreat, but thought that, if anything could tempt him, my bait would. I cautiously let down the line, taking care to keep in the deepest shadow. I did not remain long in suspense; in an instant the big fellow came at full speed from his hiding-place, running for the bait. He was noble, heavy, and gorgeous in his dress of silver and gold and black and red. He glanced at the grasshoppers to satisfy himself they were the genuine article, and then one quick, nervous bound brought his nose to the hook and the bait into his mouth, and away he went. I gave him all the line he wanted, fearing I should lose him. His course took him close to the bank, and, as he neared the edge of the stream, I laid him, with a quick, firm jerk, sprawling on the moss. I was glad not to have had any fight with him, because he would surely have broken away amid the rocks and branches. He was pretty to look upon, weighed three pounds, and was the largest specimen reaching camp that week. He graced our dinner, served up, roasted and stuffed, in our cook Phillips’s best style.

General Crook, wishing to ascertain with some definiteness the whereabouts of the Sioux, sent out during the first week of July a reconnoitring party of twenty enlisted men, commanded by Lieutenant Sibley, Second Cavalry, to escort Frank Gruard, who wished to move along the base of the mountains as far as the cañon of the Big Horn and scrutinize the country to the north and west. A larger force would be likely to embarrass the rapidity of marching with which Gruard hoped to accomplish his intention, which was that of spying as far as he could into the region where he supposed the hostiles to be; all the party were to go as lightly equipped as possible, and to carry little else than arms and ammunition. With them went two volunteers, Mr. John F. Finerty and Mr. Jim Traynor, the latter one of the packers and an old frontiersman. Another member of the party was “Big Bat.”

This little detachment had a miraculous escape from destruction: at or near the head of the Little Big Horn River, they were discovered, charged upon, and surrounded by a large body of hostile Cheyennes and Sioux, who fired a volley of not less than one hundred shots, but aimed too high and did not hit a man; three of the horses and one of the mules were severely crippled, and the command was forced to take to the rocks and timber at the edge of the mountains, whence they escaped, leaving animals and saddles behind. The savages seemed confident of their ability to take all of them alive, which may explain in part why they succeeded in slipping away under the guidance of Frank Gruard, to whom the whole country was as familiar as a book; they crept along under cover of high rocks until they had gained the higher slopes of the range, and then travelled without stopping for two days and nights, pursued by the baffled Indians, across steep precipices, swift torrents, and through almost impenetrable forests. When they reached camp the whole party looked more like dead men than soldiers of the army: their clothes were torn into rags, their strength completely gone, and they faint with hunger and worn out with anxiety and distress. Two of the men, who had not been long in service, went completely crazy and refused to believe that the tents which they saw were those of the command; they persisted in thinking that they were the “tepis” of the Sioux and Cheyennes, and would not accompany Sibley across the stream, but remained hiding in the rocks until a detachment had been sent out to capture and bring them back. It should be mentioned that one of the Cheyenne chiefs, “White Antelope,” was shot through the head by Frank Gruard and buried in all his fine toggery on the ground where he fell; his body was discovered some days after by “Washakie,” the head-chief of the Shoshones, who led a large force of his warriors to the spot. General Crook, in forwarding to General Sheridan Lieutenant Sibley’s report of the affair, indorsed it as follows: “I take occasion to express my grateful appreciation to the guides, Frank Gruard and Baptiste Pourrier, to Messrs. Bechtel, called Traynor in my telegram, and John F. Finerty, citizen volunteers, and to the small detachment of picked men from the Second Cavalry, for their cheerful endurance of the hardships and perils such peculiarly dangerous duty of necessity involves. The coolness and judgment displayed by Lieutenant Sibley and Frank Gruard, the guide, in the conduct of this reconnaissance, made in the face of the whole force of the enemy, are deserving of my warmest acknowledgments. Lieutenant Sibley, although one of the youngest officers in this department, has shown a gallantry that is an honor to himself and the service.” A very vivid and interesting description of this perilous affair has been given by Finerty in his fascinating volume, “War-Path and Bivouac.” During the absence of the Sibley party General Crook ascended the mountains to secure meat for the command; we had a sufficiency of bacon, and all the trout the men could possibly eat, but fresh meat was not to be had in quantity, and the amount of deer, elk, antelope, and bear brought in by our hunters, although considerable in itself, cut no figure when portioned out among so many hundreds of hungry mouths. The failure to hear from Terry or Gibbon distressed Crook a great deal more than he cared to admit; he feared for the worst, obliged to give ear to all the wild stories brought in by couriers and others reaching the command from the forts and agencies. By getting to the summit of the high peaks which overlooked our camps in the drainage of the Tongue, the surrounding territory for a distance of at least one hundred miles in every direction could be examined through glasses, and anything unusual going on detected. Every afternoon we were now subjected to storms of rain and lightning, preceded by gusts of wind. They came with such regularity that one could almost set his watch by them.